Alex Stone

ANALYSIS:

Alexander Stone

Engl 1147

Christina Black

12/16/13

Assignment 6: Relationship Between Fact & Fiction

People tend to associate reading novels with becoming immersed in fantasy worlds and escaping from reality. Many works of literature were indeed written for this purpose. However, such a broad statement fails to take into account authors like John Le Carre and Mohsin Hamid who based their novels, at least in part, on personal experiences. Such authors showed that what happens in a story and what happens in the real world don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Recognizing this idea offers a new perspective on literature; we discover that stories don’t have to be pigeonholed into focusing on fanciful adventures, but can also explore themes that are relevant in the real world. Specifically, examining the concept of compartmentalization in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and the theme of betrayal in The Reluctant Fundamentalist shows that the connection between fact and fiction is more intimate than it may at first appear.

Compartmentalization, as defined by David Black, is a technique where “each member of a group only knows as much about the identities of its other members, ongoing activities and future plans as is necessary for him to carry out his duties in the proper manner” (2). It is used by both criminal organizations and intelligence agencies in order to protect vital secrets from falling into the wrong hands.

Compartmentalization plays a major role in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Leamas accepts Control’s mission to appear to leave MI6 and become a double agent because he believes it will allow them to eliminate Mundt. He says to Control, “If it’s a question of killing Mundt, I’m game” (Le Carre 18). Control eliminates any doubts the reader may have that he and Leamas are on the same page by negatively describing Mundt as a “very distasteful man…Not at all the intellectual kind of Communist” (18). Control also outright says, “I think we ought to try to get rid of Mundt” (17). At this point in the story, the objective of the mission seems clear. There’s little reason to doubt that Control is being totally open with Leamas.

However, by the end of the story, we learn that that is not the case. Leamas gradually becomes aware of the fact that MI6 still has one agent left in Germany, a man who is growing more powerful each day and goes by the name of Mundt. Thus, the true objective of the mission was the exact opposite of what Control said it was. Control didn’t want Leamas to kill Mundt, but rather to protect him. In fact, jeopardizing Mundt’s position in the German intelligence service would be extremely detrimental to MI6.

Some readers may wonder why Control wasn’t honest with Leamas in the first place. Examining Leamas’s character provides an answer. Leamas has been conditioned to envision Mundt as the embodiment of evil, a villainous mastermind who is willing to use any means, no matter how cruel or under-handed, in order to achieve his goals. After all, he killed Karl Riemeck and tried to kill George Smiley. Therefore, revealing to Leamas that such an unscrupulous man is actually working for the British, who are supposed to be the “good guys”, probably would not end well. For instance, when Fielder tells Leamas he is certain Mundt is a double agent, Leamas panics. He hisses and shouts at Fiedler, but “his voice held a trace of fear” (139). Consequently, leaving Leamas in the dark with regards to the mission’s true objectives seems like the best option. This is a prime example of compartmentalization—Leamas is only told what will allow him to carry out his job more effectively.

            Compartmentalization is also used by intelligence agencies in the real world. One example of this was after the British cracked the code used by the Germans to send messages during World War II. The fact that the code, called Enigma, had been broken had such far-reaching implications that it was worth protecting at any cost. Very few people were given access to the intelligence obtained from the German messages, called Ultra; in addition to the cryptanalysts who deciphered the messages, only Allied leaders, their senior generals, and handpicked advisors were on the Ultra clearance list. Furthermore, no person who had ever had Ultra clearance could be placed at risk of capture by the Germans. (Anderson 278).

            Only high-ranked officers who needed the intelligence in order to coordinate military operations were added to the Ultra clearance list. On the other hand, less prominent officials whose jobs didn’t depend on specific knowledge of the German government’s activities were not given clearance. Doing so would serve no practical purpose. It could even be detrimental; for instance, if one amateur official was careless and somehow made the Germans suspicious that their code had been broken, the effects could have been disastrous for the British war effort. A similar situation is present in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Control, who plays a major role in coordinating his agents’ operations, knows the truth about Mundt. On the other hand, Leamas is left in the dark regarding Mundt’s identity, for it would only distract him from his mission.

            There is one interesting difference between British compartmentalization in World War II and in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. The primary goal of the former was to prevent the Germans from learning that their code had been cracked. The primary goal of the latter was to keep Leamas focused on his mission. Although in both scenarios the British intelligence service was acting to advance its own interests, the British officers during World War II attempted to deceive their enemies, while the British officers in Le Carre’s novel tried to deceive one of their own agents.

            Betrayal is another theme that can be seen in both fact and fiction. In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Changez is given the tools to create a successful future for himself in America. He receives an education from Princeton, which gives him a new perspective on his life. Changez knows deep down that he is destined to do great things. He says, “Princeton inspired in me the feeling that my life was a film in which I was the star and everything was possible” (Hamid 3). After graduating from Princeton, Changez finds a job at Underwood Samson, a firm so prestigious that over a hundred members of his graduating class sent their résumés there. Changez explains, “They paid well, offering the fresh graduate a base salary of over eighty thousand dollars…a robust set of skills and an exalted brand name” (5). Changez then says, “Princeton made everything possible for me” (15). The word “made” suggests a cause-and-effect relationship; Changez seems to believe he was able to get the job at Underwood Samson because he attended Princeton and that such a fantastic opportunity would not have presented itself had he stayed in Pakistan.

Yet, at the end of the story, Changez throws this opportunity away by at first neglecting and ultimately abandoning his work valuing a bookstore in Chile. He has a valid reason for doing so—rising tensions between America and Pakistan after 9/11 pushed him into a deep identity crisis. However, emotional turmoil doesn’t change the fact that his decision causes Underwood Samson to miss the deadline for valuing the store. This puts the firm in a difficult position at a time when they aren’t receiving many job offers in the first place. Jim puts it bluntly when he says to Changez, “‘You really screwed us, kid’” (159).

Changez doesn’t feel guilty about abruptly leaving Underwood Samson because he thinks of it in terms of big concepts; he sees it as his way of rebelling against the cruel American upper class that is attempting to oppress his native country. However, Jim offers a different perspective. He says to Changez, “In wartime soldiers don’t really fight for their flags, Changez. They fight for their friends, their buddies. Their team. Well, right now your team is asking you to stay” (153). Looking at Changez’s decision in this light erases much of the sympathy we may have felt for him.  At a time when they needed him, Changez abandoned his colleagues at Underwood Samson, the people he’d worked side-by-side with in order to hone his skills. His actions also made a statement that all the work he’d done with his peers at Princeton that had allowed him to get a job at the firm may as well have been for nothing. All in all, he betrayed the people who had allowed him to become successful.

Changez’s decision can be compared to the political situation in Afghanistan in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. After the communist Afghan government attempted to remodel the country in the image of the Soviet Union, which included repressing Islam, a widespread revolt broke out. Seeing this as a chance to weaken communism, America began channeling large-scale military assistance to the rebels, called the mujahideen, via the Pakistan intelligence service. This allowed the rebels to overthrow the communist government (Black 14-15). In a sense, the mujahideen are similar to Changez. The Afghan rebels needed outside support in order to win the conflict. After all, they were a decentralized group of primarily ordinary people with little combat experience and limited supplies, while the Afghan army was well-trained, well-armed and backed by the Soviet Union. Their success in the rebellion was dependent on support from America, much like Changez’s success in life was dependent on his Princeton degree and job at Underwood Samson.

On the surface, the secret operation seemed to be working out for America. However, many of the Pakistan intelligence service officers were very pious Muslims who preferred to distribute American aid to mujahideen groups with similar religious views, no matter how radical their agendas were. One such group was the Taliban, which came to power in the aftermath of the Afghan rebellion. This wasn’t problematic for America in and of itself. However, after the Al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, the Taliban offered a safe haven for Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, repeatedly refusing U.S. demands to extradite Bin Laden even after his responsibility for the attack became apparent (14-15).

American aid had indirectly been the cause of the Taliban’s success in the Afghan rebellion and subsequent rise to power, so extraditing Bin Laden may have seemed like an easy opportunity for the Taliban to repay the favor. However, they did the complete opposite, offering Bin Laden political asylum in Afghanistan. The leaders of the Taliban could have momentarily put aside their political and religious beliefs and done the right thing. Instead, they made a statement that they didn’t care that America had helped them or that thousands of innocent people had lost their lives in the Al-Qaeda attack. This action ultimately prompted the American invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, where even more people were killed. Thus, America’s decision to support the Afghan rebels ended up backfiring on them, much like Princeton’s and Underwood Samson’s decisions to support Changez.

The concept of compartmentalization in John Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold mirrors a system that was used extensively by the British intelligence service during World War II. Furthermore, the theme of betrayal in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist resembles the Taliban’s rise to power in Afghanistan at the end of the twentieth century. Such parallels reveal the flaws in the commonly-held belief that what happens in a story and what happens in real life must be mutually exclusive and, in turn, offer a new perspective on literature.

Works Cited

Anderson, Ross. Security Engineering - A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems. 2nd ed. Wiley, 2008. 1-891. Web. <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/book.html>.

Black, David. Terrorism as an Intelligence Problem. 1-20.

Hamid, Mohsin. The Reluctant Fundamentalist. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2008. 1-184.

Le Carre, John. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. New York: Penguin Group, 2013. 1-125.